The UVoD - common abbreviation - is a non-periodic webcomic, drawn by French artist Francois Launet, and dealing with Howard Phillips Lovecraft's Universe. It is supposed to be funny, although most of HP Lovecraft's works are rather dark.

HPL (usual abbreviation of Howard Phillips Lovecraft) was an American writer, born in 1890, who wrote science fiction and fantastic novels and short stories. He is famous for having built a new impressive mythology, where powerful Deities and alien beings rule the universe, and where humans are little more than ants. Some of these foolish humans try to summon/contact those creatures, whose vision is unspeakable and drives to insanity. This new vision of the universe was (later) called "the Cthulhu mythos" - from the name of one of those Gods - and even became "the Mythos". HPL was never famous during is lifetime, and died without seeing his works published elsewhere than in cheap "pulp" magazines. Lovecraft had a very rich correspondence with a lot of other writers, and many of them continued his works, adding new Gods, Creatures, Places and characters. HPLs life itself was really special: he led a secluded life, with very conservative ideas. Many people wrote about him: if you're interested, begin with the reference website http://www.hplovecraft.com where you'll find all needed clues.

First of all, though he is known as a cold and "unamused" hermit, Lovecraft wrote parodies and had fun with his friend writers. Humor is not incompatible with his universe. And as many of his fans, I was marked deeply by his work and admire them, but after years of faithful adoration, I suppose I can take some distance and try to have fun with the rest of HPL's fans/readers out there. Of course this brings me to deal with un-politically correct subjects, such as death or religion.

If you don't know anything about HPL (see above), you won't be able to understand most of the UVoD comic strips. So, read one or two short stories from Him ("The Call of Cthulhu" for example) or at lead some digests about him and be back. Or go to Dilbert.com

A role-playing game from Sandy Petersen based on HPL's universe was published in 1981 by Chaosium. It was a shock for role-players after years of Dungeon Hacking. In the game, players are called "investigators", facing threats beyond human imagination, trying to prevent the return of the Outer gods on earth, and fighting insane cultists. It was one of the first games to have a real "horror" mood, in a marked departure from the classical Dungeon and Dragon spirit (okay, Ravenloft set aside!) ... In the "Call of Cthulhu" (the commercial name of the game), a player couldn't really win and gain more power/experience/levels, and merely tried to survive without becoming insane. One of the game new and exciting feature was the "Sanity" statistic: when confronted to supernatural evidence, or horrible events, the characters were subject to sanity loss, and could finish the game completely insane. The Call of Cthulhu Game was a way for geekish teenagers to discover the literature of one the greatest fantasy writer of the century, and many of HPL's fans are former role players (such as me!). Some of UvoDs strips deal with aspects known only to those RPG players... sorry! Cthulhu Dark Ages is a recent adaptation of the "Call of Cthulhu", involving medieval characters confronted to the ageless Mythos. Other adaptations exist: Cthulhu Now and Delta Green (set in the contemporary world), and Cthulhu by gaslight (set in the XVIII-XXe century, although most of the published modules focus on the 1920-1940 period).

Goomi is my nickname, used on the web or in my job. It comes from a japanese word meaning garbage (but also mean 'condom' in german...)

No, I'm a professional designer/painter/illustrator, and I design 3D special effects for movies and commercials. In fact I hate drawing comics (drawing twice the same thing, to be precise), but the UVoD is "light" and fun enough to spend some time on it.

You can visit my personal website (dealing with my graphics work at http://www.goominet.com and see some of my "serious" design related to HPL's world here.

Unspeakable was an adjective often used by HPL and representative of his style (somehow heavy, with many complex and old-style adjectives). There's also a short story called "The Vault" by Lovecraft Himself. "Of Doom" was often use by my playing team to pompously qualify anything of a particularly threatening nature... such as the mighty spell " Abysmal Triple Pillum of Doom"... scary!

I have no "official" rythme. I try to publish new strips every weeks, but when I'm overbooked, it's sometimes difficult.

IMHO English is better adapted to this kind of direct humour (and can potentially reach a larger number of readers). It uses less words to reach the same effect than in french. Thanks to my editors (Denis Villafranca and Paul of Cthulhu) , my somehow poor english is regulary corrected. paradoxically, I asked to a professional writer to translate my strips in French, as this task is really difficult.

I can be contacted here: goomi(at)goominet.com.To avoid Spam filtering, add [UVoD] in the beggining of the Mail Subject.